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Healthy Garden Healthy Home (HGHH)

Healthy Garden Healthy Home
Healthy Garden Healthy Home (HGHH) is a system of farming around household premises which satisfies the family nutrition and food requirements to some extent. The main feature of HGHH, it is situated around household area and sustains family for its food and nutrition requirement as well as supports in income generation activity for family. HGHH provides vegetables, fruits, spices and fish required for a family while it also conserves herbs and flowers that have aesthetic and religious value. Garden utilizes the land available near to house and grows various species of plants useful for fulfilling family requirements. It also conserves biodiversity by retaining various useful species and helps to maintain biological diversity around household. Health garden provides opportunity for income generation as well as saves money for buying daily vegetables and fruits.

Family Nutritional Security
Nutrition refers to the food required by a person to live a healthy life. It is required for growth and development of cells, tissues or required for repairment of damaged cells and production of energy required for the body of a human being. Family members should consume all the nutritional food required for their healthy living. Basically, nutrition is divided in five major types  and these are; carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, fats, minerals and water. Carbohydrates provide energy required for the body; proteins build up the tissues and organs; vitamins supports in growth and development of cells, tissues and body; fats protects heart, liver and lungs; minerals help in growth of muscles and water regulates temperature of body. Therefore, it is quite necessary to consume foods that provide the essential nutrition for growth and development of body. Foods such as cereals, pulses, green vegetables, meat and eggs when consumed during meals and dinners provide all the essential nutrition. Combination of foods that provide the entire nutrient necessary for human growth and development is called balanced diet.

Features of Health gardens
Healthy garden establishment includes better planning including its layout of the various components like compost, water sources, vegetable areas, fruits plantation regions etc. Better planning of home garden allows utilizing spaces and resources. Healthy garden has its specific plots. It is established to fulfill the nutritional requirement of the family. It is required to plan for various crops to be grown in the garden. Separate areas are allocated for vegetables with various types of growing habbits and season. This is required to utilize the sunlight, moisture, soil nutrition and spaces. Healthy garden has some major features, these are:
-          is around household vicinity
-          produces year round crops
-          utilizes local available inputs
-           helps in food diversity and bio-diversity
-           ensures family nutrition security
-           promotes integrated crop production

Vegetable gardening is a major component of healthy garden. It is an allocated area inside a garden where seasonal as well as off-seasonal vegetables are produced. It is experienced that for a five-membered family at least 200 square meters’ vegetable garden is required. Vegetable garden provides daily vegetables for a family in a year-round basis. Therefore, it is taken as most important part within healthy garden. It provides opportunity to cultivate year round crops and also supports for income generation by selling surplus produce in nearby market.

Action Research and Field Implementation
DCA is starting the concept with 700 families in Gorkha and Dhading districts and plans to scale up from the learning. In between we will need to do a lot, prepare ourselves, and come up with clear implementation guideline. We are thankful to DCA and our partners for their hard work thus enabling us to live up the “health home healthy garden”.

The agriculture and livestock activities around the homestead is ensured by the technical and trained staff. They provide technical training and support on the appropriate agriculture and livestock inputs. This may vary from the drought resistant seed varieties to latest breeding bucks. Homestead refers to the home and the immediate surrounding land used by the family. Many small plot production activities happen at this level including vegetable and fruit production or household fish farming. Most of the poor people spend a very high proportion of their income on food as they do not have enough land to produce food for all  their needs. They grow some produce on small plots of land around their homestead or on common property resources or common lands. Homestead plots are easily developed under individual initiative. Growing vegetables within the homestead is also more convenient and secure.

Additionally, the disaster risk reduction is mainstreamed into the concept by preparation of disaster risk management plans undertaken through identification of hazards and vulnerabilities. Ensuring that people have access to safe water, water safety plans are embedded into each water supply systems. Water safety plan is a management tool for securing drinking-water safety from water source to point of use through continuous monitoring and preventive maintenance of water supply systems. For further reinforcing resilience of the community, technical advice will be facilitated for agriculture and livestock insurance. Given the high acceptance of the community on livestock insurance, DCA has planned to expand insurance schemes to water supply systems. There are many water supply systems across the country that have been damaged due to natural disaster such as landslides and flood or pipeline damaged during road development in the rural areas. The insurance of these systems would be helpful for the communities when major repairs are required. The premium for the insurance can be paid through the routine monthly water tariff collected by the users committee. 

For more : Chiranjibi Rijal, csrijal@gmail.com
                  Cecial Adhikari, cecial.adhikari@gmail.com


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